She may need others to lean on, just not too far left
For the next three months, possibly three years, it is going to be difficult to say anything mean about Jacinda Ardern. If I was her I would also have a baby and that would make it even harder. She is a highly appealing, obviously intelligent person with her heart smack-bang in the right place. She will be a fantastic ambassador for the country and the overseas press is going to have a field day extolling her praises once she starts doing the rounds.
Charm and popularity go a long way in politics. David Lange was jolly and funny and consequently got an easy ride from political journalists. After the pugilistic Muldoon, he was a pleasure to report on. As a first-timer, he also got some leeway and was the perfect salesman for the fundamental reform, much of it well overdue, of Kiwi society.
Of course, Ardern could be made to pay for her charm. Journalists will want to show they are just as tough on the left as they are on the right and are not seduced by her personality. They could therefore be harsher on her and her regime. Where could Ardern possibly go wrong? Much has been said about her inexperience and her relentless positivity but in many ways she is much better prepared for power than Lange and John Key were. It’s true Lange had some formidably talented Cabinet members and Key was just a phenomenon. But while Ardern’s Cabinet is an unknown quantity, she will have Annette King close at hand and Helen Clark will be only a phone call away.
Ardern is vulnerable though, in an area where she is strongest. She empathises most with the strugglers and disadvantaged but must at the same time serve the interests that keep the country earning, profiting and competitive. If she wants to help the losers she must keep the winners on side. If she wants to support the spenders, she must help the savers as well.
A tilt to the left won’t hurt New Zealand much and is probably healthy after nine years of a centre-right Government. But an economic or fiscal tilt is one thing, a cultural shift is another. In the current cultural climate, which is becoming increasingly polarised, she will have to guard against pandering to her natural team, the liberal left. We haven’t reached the sad predicament of America, which is engaged in a cultural war based on race, religion and geography, but we show some of the same symptoms.
The liberal left is touchy and constantly on the watch for offence. If you put a case with which they disagree, you are immediately labelled misogynist, racist, stupid, ill-informed, biased and insensitive.
They, of course, are enlightened, tolerant, wellinformed and entirely reasonable. The conservative right can be just as bad but they are less numerous and usually less strident.
The liberal left love broadcaster John Campbell but loathe Mike Hosking, slamming his every utterance and facial expression.
When broadcaster Mark Richardson questioned the current orthodoxy that employers are not allowed to consider whether a female job applicant is likely to start a family soon, he was met by an avalanche of scorn when it was an arguable point (see my previous column).
When columnist Duncan Garner, who is generally fairly politically correct, saw a parallel between waiting to buy his underpants in Kmart in a long queue of Asian people, and services being overrun by excessive immigration, he was metaphorically lynched by the Twittersphere. Have you noticed how underpants are always getting prominent Kiwis in trouble?
But I digress. The liberal left, who perhaps have more optimistic views of their fellow man and woman, also tend to see deprivation and disadvantage as a symptom of something badly wrong with the system.
Right-wingers tend to think those on benefits and complaining of poverty could try a bit harder to help themselves. What can Ardern do to avoid being captured and inadvertently contributing to a hardening of any cultural rift?
She could recognise that not all society’s ills are the fault of the white male so-called patriarchy. She could also acknowledge that more cash in people’s pockets is not going to fix the entrenched poverty due to personal and generational dysfunction.
She could now and then suggest Ma¯ ori culture does not have a monopoly on all that is good in the universe and ensure her voice is not added to the whiney, condemnatory voices of the excessively politically correct.
She should also eschew beliefs that "different outcomes for men and women in society are entirely a function of sexism, and … resistance to mass immigration or multiculturalism is mere racism or bigotry," as American commentator Andrew Sullivan wrote recently.
She might be wise to agree occasionally that governments are generally not very good at picking entrepreneurial-type businesses that will justify the investment of taxpayer money.
Ardern will be helped by her partners in the coalition. Ironically NZ First comes from the negative stance on people and may well work to put a brake on Ardern’s rosier views of humanity.
If Ardern expresses her sincere belief that a particular measure will make great inroads into poverty, Ron Mark might caution her not to get her hopes up.
Ardern will know when she has got it right when she is attacked by her bedfellows in the liberal left. Not that that is likely to happen.
George Orwell wrote that: "There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when ‘our’ side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case … still one cannot feel that it is wrong."